Talk:Anabolism

Wiki Education Foundation-supported course assignment
This article is or was the subject of a Wiki Education Foundation-supported course assignment. Further details are available on the course page. Student editor(s): HeatherKJ4.

Above undated message substituted from Template:Dashboard.wikiedu.org assignment by PrimeBOT (talk) 14:07, 16 January 2022 (UTC)

Re the metabolic processes
Catabolism is never switched off doing anabolism - or reverse in any living cell. The cellurlar processes are controlled by seperating the production of the specific intermediats by intercelluler compartments, by regulating associated enzyme activity and by the natural limitation of concentration in the cell metabolism.

NB! Homones does not effect any process directly, but wille effect the associated enzyme activity.

Biochemistry Student, DTU.

Stub tag
I removed the stub tag both because this article is getting to be slightly longer than is classically considered a stub, and catabolism, which is almost exactly the same size, does not have one. D-rew 20:13, 5 February 2007 (UTC)

anabolism/catabolism is not sleep/wake cycle
This is just flat wrong. Read the definitions of anabolic and catabolic. Either can occur while awake or asleep. They have more to do with nutrition and lack of severe illness or stress than with sleep/wake. Thanks. alteripse 17:48, 1 Jan 2005 (UTC)

Anonymous user. Thank you for contributing, but we need to talk about your understanding of anabolic and catabolic. This second iteration is better but still somewhat idiosyncratic. We usually try to use scientifically accepted definitions of words so our articles on scientific topics actually correspond to what people might read in science textbooks and real research journals. The relationship between anabolic processes and sleep is only partial, and not central to the definition. It is possible for catabolic processes to predominate during sleep if you are starving or ill, and anabolic processes usually should predominate during the day in most healthy people. Some repair processes do occur during sleep, but your description suggests an oversimplified seesaw of anabolic/catabolic that corresponds to the sleep/wake cycle. This is misleading in relationship to usual scientific usages of anabolic and catabolic. Can you cite any biochemistry or molecular biology texts or reputable sources that agree with your view? Please do some reading. What you have added has too much of a flavor of "sort-of" science, like you find in muscle magazines, alt health publications, or "spiritual" health sources. alteripse 19:51, 1 Jan 2005 (UTC)

Hello, GeneMosher. I'd like to modify your recent additions for the purpose of accuracy but wanted to explain why. First, I like the mention of growth as involving synthesis of complex molecules, but would like to demote the phrase from the primary definitional sentence. While a dash leaves some ambiguity as to the relationship of two phrases, an indication that the second phrase is a restatement or elaboration of the first in plainer words is a common way to understand it. While synthesis of certain complex molecules (structural proteins, glycogen, fat) is one of the processes of growth ("an increase of size and secondarily of maturation of an organism"), growth is a larger process. One reason we might not want to feature synthesis of complex molecules in the introductory sentence is that catabolism also involves synthesis of complex molecules -- just a different set of complex molecules. For instance, synthesis of immunoglobulins, cytokines, and catabolic hormones are examples of synthesis of complex molecules that occur during catabolic processes. This is a minor point and perhaps you can accuse me of being nitpicky.

The second point is the one related to sleep, and that is a clearer accuracy issue. It is simply flat wrong to say that catabolism is a characteristic of the wakened state. I notice from your user contributions you have an interest in sleep. Your edit resembles the anomynomous edits I reverted with the explanation above. Let me see if I can be clearer and more persuasive. I know that in popular culture we think of sleep as a "repair period" for the day's wear and tear, but I am not sure how much research support there is for taking that literally. Most growth hormone (an anabolic hormone) is secreted during sleep, but the next most common stimuli for GH are protein ingestion and exercise, while the major peak of ACTH, an archetypal catabolic hormone, also occurs during sleep. In fact another aspect of anabolism/catabolism is almost the complete opposite of your claim: much anabolic synthesis occurs during the fed state when insulin levels are high-- while during much of the night our insulin is low and we have a net withdrawal from our stores of complex molecules such as glycogen. Finally, sleep does not turn off catabolic processes during starvation, infection, hormone deficiency, or illness. In other words, the relationship between anabolic processes and sleep is complex, and you can make a stronger case for the postprandial periods being the major anabolic phases of whatever diurnal anabolic/catabolic rhythm can be demonstrated in people and animals. I think the strongest statement we can make and support with scientific references is that some anabolic processes occur during sleep. Are you ok with this or do we need to exchange more physiological information?

Also, feel free to write articles about orexin and hypocretin. I know little about orexin and less about hypocretin. All you have to do to start an article is to click on the word in red.

Finally, I hate to discourage a new contributor by arguing with his first contributions, but I have the feeling I have had this half of the conversation before. We try to keep our physiology articles in a scientific perspective and I am always open to learning or teaching. Thanks for understanding. alteripse 02:04, 10 Mar 2005 (UTC)

First of all, I did the anonymous edits. I am a really busy person and only have a short amount of time now and then to write. I have no desire to sound confrontational but I only have a little time for now and I'm grateful to have this dialog going. What I'm weary of is the ubiquitous non-explanations that sleep is a mystery we don't understand and that sleep is nature's way of clearing garbage out of our minds from when we're awake. (If less intelligent animals didn't sleep then that would be a reasonable supposition, but they do, and it isn't.)

We need to ask the right questions here - why do animals awake, and what is 'being awake'. Being awake is clearly a catabolic state. If you do too much if it, if any animal does, it kills the animal. You cannot die from too much sleep, however, because it is an anabolic state, but by itself you starve, etc. That's why animal life, at every level, is a constant switching between the two states, until old age brings it to a halt.

I have created certain understandings in my life that are the result of insights that I have had - nothing mystical or religious or spiritual at all - just creative insights. I am a graphical language architect. I've a history of being right in a certain way about such insights. I've created software GUI paradigms that work in any culture and have been adopted worldwide. I happen to have a lot of confidence in my insights. Of course I'm limited as we all are in being able to understand new things in terms of what is known, but I just don't see sleep as a mystery - I see it as the 'default' mode of existence for all animal life, from single celled organisms to ourselves. I see being awake as the hyperactive time when cell division (procreation) and ingestion take place. In the same sense that a single celled animal can't constantly be ingesting and undergoing mitosis, neither can any multi celled animal constantly be ingesting and procreating. It would exhaust and kill in either case.

I would, naturally, like to be refuted with facts to disprove my hypothesis, as your effort demonstrates, but I don't find your general argument very persuasive yet. It's important, I think, to throw something up against the wall and see if it sticks. We can learn from doing that a lot faster than we can if we are afraid of making a mess on the wall. Let's break some eggs and see what kind of omelette we can childern GeneMosher 00:26, 12 Mar 2005 (UTC)

I appreciate the response and your openness to discussion. The main problems: 1. You are either using an idiosyncratic definition of anabolism or you are simply at least partly mistaken in your understanding of it. 2. We actually have a policy called No original research which as you might get is to discourage the introduction of novel, eccentric, and unfounded theories, no matter how clever, as if they were supported and accepted fact. Your exposition of your "theory" about sleep appears to me to come perilously close if not exactly what the policy is designed to exclude.

Your "insight" that wakefulness is automatically catabolic because prolonged sleep deprivation leads to some catabolic changes is certainly a novel hypothesis, but a logical non-sequitur. I suspect a more likely explanation is simply that sleep deprivation triggers catabolic processes by way of the stress hormone signals that shift to catabolism, which by no means proves that as soon as we wake up we shift to catabolism.

Metabolism, with its yin and yang of anabolism and catabolism, is basically a topic common to biochemistry, cell biology, physiology, and endocrinology. I have a lot of years and a couple of diplomas and certificates saying I am supposed to know a fair amount about biochemistry and endocrinology. (I don't claim such expertise about sleep). I am not expecting you to yield to what I say because I have degrees but I hope I can at least persuade you that I know how most scientists and physicians use the term anabolic, and it isn't the way you are using it. Please do a little research on what other people with expertise think anabolic and catabolic processes are and when they happen. I am not arguing that some sort of restorative process might not happen during sleep, just that there not a simple correspondence between anabolism and sleep. I have explained in fairly lengthy and patient detail above and have give specific examples which you can verify in any biochemistry and/or endocrinology text and which contradict your claims. In other words, I have patiently refuted you with facts. If you can provide some published supporting evidence we can perhaps craft some mention of the specific anabolic processes associated with sleep. Or perhaps you might try using a set of words that is not already defined differently than you want to use them.

Without further evidence, I remain unpersuaded that your theory belongs here or should be associated with the specific word anabolism. Thanks for understanding and desisting from presenting your insights as encyclopedic fact. alteripse 02:37, 12 Mar 2005 (UTC)

Re sleep
That's all fine and dandy but for this one problem - why do we sleep? And the answer to that has to be found. I don't know where else to discuss it except here. It took me a while to get Mr. Sandman, the guardian of the Sleep page, to allow that sleep is not just a behavioral trait but a metabolic necessity.

What we have with regard to sleep and awake is that they are metabolic, subcellular processes. And they balance each other. I really like the last paragraph of the Anabolism page - "Because it is counterproductive to have anabolic and catabolic processes occurring in cells simultaneously, there are many signals that switch on anabolic processes while switching off catabolic processes and vice versa". It sounds like a very satisfactory expression of the asleep/awake metabolic processes, too.

I like that because it explains why can't be both awake and asleep at one time. And the hormones & endocrines that are identified as triggering the switching between anabolic & catabolic metabolic states are the same ones that are identified as triggering the switching between sleeping & being awake. Is it not, therefore, obvious that a discussion of anabolic/catabolic metabolic balancing is a correct framework for a discussion of asleep/awake metabolic balancing?

It just seems to make so much sense to me that being asleep is the normal state of animal life, from the one cell animal to the most complex multi-cell animal, and that being awake is only about getting nutrition and procreating. We humans are so busy when we're awake that this is obscured from us, but it's clear that this is all that every other animal life form does. And the fact that an animal can be awake (active and in a catabolic metabolic state) for 16, 18 or 20 hours only means that it has achieved the ability to balance its metabolic equation by having a very efficient anabolic mechanism.

As someone who thinks about these issues, what are some of your thoughts regarding these questions - why does any animal organism have periods of catabolic metabolism? Are there any animal organisms which don't have periods of catabolic metabolism? How do catabolic metabolic activities contribute to the survival of an animal organism?

I'd rather have a discussion with people who have your background than a discussion with people who are human behavioral scientists because sleep is not a human-centric activity. I'd also like to have you introduce editable subsections of the talk page. I don't know how to do that yet. GeneMosher 7 July 2005 21:35 (UTC)


 * I am not sure I understand your first paragraph and you have completely ignored most of my previously stated concerns about your additions. What do you mean by, "why do we sleep? And the answer to that has to be found. I don't know where else to discuss it except here." I don't know why we sleep. I agree with you that it is a very interesting question. I am willing to discuss metabolism but am not current on larger aspects of sleep physiology. I just find myself shaking my head when I see sentences like, "sleep and awake ... are metabolic, subcellular processes." How are they that? To my mind, nearly every definition of the difference between sleep and wake is whole-organ, whole-organism differences. I don't even know any "subcellular" difference between sleep and wake, so your statement is unintelligible to me. Can you name a subcellular or metabolic process that is distinctively associated with only sleep or wake? Every one I know and all the aspects of anabolism and catabolism described in this article are far more closely tied to fed/fasting than to asleep/awake differences. Even if you can think of some metabolic changes that occur at least with greater or less frequency during sleep (e.g., GH or ACTH pulses), the difference is quantitative and not qualitative. The same goes for an assertion like, " being asleep is the normal state of animal life,". What does that mean? The assertion makes no sense. Both sleep and waking are "normal" states for people and animals as far as I can understand and it seems bizarre to claim that one is normal and the other abnormal. How would you prove or disprove that?

Basically, I am afraid our understanding of the very words and the epistemologic basis for claiming a statement like those is meaningful and evaluatable as true or false are simply non-overlapping. I don't think about physiological processes like you, I don't use these words with the meanings you do, but most importantly, I think we would have different criteria for judging a statement about a body process as true or false. I hate to say this, but I think my way is the way most scientists would use these concepts and I think you need to find different words for the idiosyncratic ideas you are talking about. You sound like you are talking about chi, or yin and yang, or chakras, or being elect--- none of those are meaningful or evaluatable concepts from a scientific perspective, even if they are meaningful in other perspectives of understanding life, the universe, and everything.

Finally, remember the purpose of this article, which is to explain a basic concept of metabolism as used by those who study metabolism, rather than to "explore" new ways of understanding a tangentially related process like sleep. I don't mind talking to you here, but are my sentences about the body making as little sense to you as yours are to me? alteripse 8 July 2005 02:37 (UTC)

I appreciate the time you've taken to respond to what I've written. Your analysis of what I've written is perceptive, articulate, well reasoned and correct. Moreover, this isn't the place for solving the mystery of why we sleep. Admittedly, I don't have the background or training to frame the path ahead in a way which is not frustrating to those who do are disciplined scientists, and the time I have daily is only brief.

I think a way ahead is for me to encourage you to continue to guide the expansion of Wikipedia's Anabolism page into a comprehensive survey of the topic and its implications. I think that it is important for every person to be much more informed of the concepts of anabolism and catabolism, to have a better understanding of the discrete, balancing roles of these two aspects of metabolism. I'd like these concepts to be something much more than just terms that they deal with for a few days in high school biology, then forget about for the rest of their lives. I'd like people to be curious their whole lives long about the intricacies of metabolism as a key to good health, about the role a well-balanced metabolism plays in health and well-being. It's only through information about the metabolic processes that we can learn to live in ways which foster a healthy metabolism. I'm supportive of everything that you do here as you guide the page toward that, making it a resource that is useful to as many people as possible. GeneMosher 9 July 2005 07:54 (UTC)


 * Thanks for the friendly words. It is beneficial to bump into someone with a different way of looking at the world. alteripse 9 July 2005 13:21 (UTC)

Catabolism
Can anyone explain to me why when fasting the body is supposed to eat its own muscles rather than fatty deposits? It just strikes me as odd how when your having trouble getting food your body's reaction would be to decrease your ability to hunt down more. Darkling235 17:59, 6 June 2006 (UTC)


 * That is sort of an oversimplification but there is a grain of truth in it: even with early stages of fasting, some muscle catabolism begins while ample fat may remain. I think the answer is that more than energy must be supplied, and fat may be a good energy source, but muscles serve as an amino acid source. Our organs and tissues have ongoing needs for at least some synthesis of protein even when fasting, and muscle is the only possible source. alteripse 03:00, 7 June 2006 (UTC)

Anabolism and Catabolism
I suggest we change the title to "anabolism and catabolism" to make it more accurate when linked to from metabolism or cell metabolism. Rozzychan 18:55, 23 June 2006 (UTC)
 * I'd rather have Catabolism split out into a separate article. One is not simply the reverse of the other; they are separate concepts and thus, in my opinion, deserve separate articles. Rl 09:38, 6 August 2006 (UTC)

I agree with Rl. I have started the process of splitting. ENIAC 18:55, 5 September 2006 (UTC)

Split: Anabolism
I have proposed splitting anabolism into anabolism and catabolism.

My reason for doing so is that the article, anabolism, discusses two distinct topics, anabolism and catabolism.

If there are no objections, I will split the article on Tuesday, October 3rd, 2006, 4 weeks from today (Tuesday, September 5, 2006).

ENIAC 18:55, 5 September 2006 (UTC)


 * It might be better to merge this (both topics) into Metabolism, as anabolism and catabolism are types of metabolism, inter-related, and these are rather short articles anyway. —Centrx→talk &bull; 19:00, 5 September 2006 (UTC)


 * I don't agree: they can both stand on themselves. Metabolism is way to broad. Remember that many articles link to these terms, and users seeking clarification of these words would get lost in an article like metabolism.--Steven Fruitsmaak (Reply) 19:02, 5 September 2006 (UTC)
 * Metabolism is a very short article, it just links to various particular processes, somewhat like this one, but I am not medically knowledgeable enough to say what classifications would be appropriate. —Centrx→talk &bull; 19:09, 5 September 2006 (UTC)


 * How would it work to split them up, and categorize anabolism as a stub? I am not expert on the feild, but it seems like there would be much more information one could add to anabolism.  Maybe splitting up the pages will encourage expansion. -ENIAC (Talk) (Current Projects) 14:19, 9 September 2006 (UTC)


 * While I don't think merging into metabolism is a good idea, these concepts are essentially linked, and the understanding of one aids the understanding of the other. Splitting would unavoidably cause duplication of the same information. Maybe we could create an article Anabolism and catabolism, similar to what I've done with Enzyme induction and inhibition?--Steven Fruitsmaak (Reply) 09:55, 10 September 2006 (UTC)
 * I agree with this proposal also. alteripse 23:11, 13 September 2006 (UTC)
 * That sounds like a way to take care of it to me. I think we should rename the page to Anabolism and catabolism. -ENIAC (Talk) (Current Projects) 22:46, 13 September 2006 (UTC)
 * That is not the proper naming of articles. The enzyme one should be merged or renamed to a more accurate title, or split. Similarly, Anabolism and Catabolism should either be separate articles or should be merged into Metabolism. Having a conjunctive title is just a stop-gap, it is not a final solution. Encyclopedia articles belong in singular, well-defined places. —Centrx→talk &bull; 22:55, 13 September 2006 (UTC)
 * I disagree: some concepts are so intertwined and cannot be treated separately. It's a natural way of covering matters IMHO. But this page can be split, I do not object.--Steven Fruitsmaak (Reply) 16:37, 21 September 2006 (UTC)
 * When they are so intertwined, they almost always have a general, single name that includes both intertwined concepts, in this case Metabolism. —Centrx→talk &bull; 20:01, 24 September 2006 (UTC)
 * I once again purpose splitting the article. -ENIAC (Talk) (Current Projects) 13:00, 15 September 2006 (UTC)
 * Go for it, but don't put them in the same title like that. —Centrx→talk &bull; 17:25, 17 September 2006 (UTC)
 * I will split up the page on September 24, 2006 unless there are more objections. -ENIAC (Talk) (Current Projects) 14:07, 20 September 2006 (UTC)

thermodynamics
To put it another way, anabolic processes use up energy (endergonic) while catabolic processes produce energy (exergonic). I moved this sentence from the intro. Linguistically the sentence is false (the assertion is not a restating of the previous concept), but that is just awkward writing, while I think the concept itself needs better explanation. Typical anabolic processes of synthesis of storage macromolecules or growth of organs certainly consume energy, but so do many processes that we think of as catabolic, such as glycogen breakdown to maintain blood glucose, or muscle breakdown to provide gluconeogenic substrates, or release of cytokines and cortisol in response to stress, or increasing body temperature to produce fever, etc. In other words, most catabolic processes consume energy from outside the organism as well. Can anyone suggest a better way to express this generalization or its limits? alteripse 11:49, 19 April 2007 (UTC)

removed merge tag
Removed merge tag. See Talk:Biosynthesis.AshLin 13:10, 23 July 2007 (UTC)

to clarify
In 2012 is well known that sleep and rest are activities related to a preminency of an anabolic activity...for resarches on this issues please search by yourselves... I have not time... but we must say that sleep and rest are related to anabolic activities more than catabolic ones... — Preceding unsigned comment added by 94.37.171.198 (talk) 09:56, 6 June 2012 (UTC) " It is possible for catabolic processes to predominate during sleep if you are starving or ill"...alteripse.. you're oversimplifing too... during sleep in illness or starving catabolic processes can raise but not "predominate".... — Preceding unsigned comment added by 94.37.171.198 (talk) 11:18, 6 June 2012 (UTC) "and anabolic processes usually should predominate during the day in most healthy people"maybe is wrong: during day(not sleep or rest) catabolic activities predominate and there's quite a lot of experimental evidence on this issue. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 94.37.172.114 (talk) 17:40, 6 June 2012 (UTC)

Why does "anabolite" redirect here?
Word not used in page. 86.139.166.113 (talk) 00:23, 12 August 2013 (UTC)